Barnacle Bimble, Fisherman’s Trail and Bloom Trail series, followed by other caches in the Coventry / Birmingham corridor

On Sunday Isaac was free and the weather was forecast to be even hotter than it was yesterday. Sounds like a perfect excuse to go caching! We’d had a look for likely destinations and the Barnacle Bimble series just north of Coventry appealed as I’d enjoyed the same cache owner’s other series (Burgo and Beans) last week.

Lovely old traditional caravan by the canal

We were soon parking up in the village of Barnacle (strange name for a place that is not near the sea!). After getting kitted up for our walk and packing lots of drinks, we set off. The first part of the walk took us over fields and past several fishing pools, then the second part was along the Coventry and Oxford canals. The final part of the walk was back over the fields to where we’d started.

A family of swans on the canal

The caches were all quick and easy finds with a nice variety of hides and cache sizes. All too soon we were back at the Jeep and planning where to head for next.

Bluebell woods towards the end of the Barnacle Bimble

The Fisherman’s Trail to the west of Coventry was next and on the way we picked up a quick drive-by by a Scout camp. The series itself was another great walk in an area we’ve been caching to before. One of the caches was an ammo box too, which is always good to see.

Beautiful views on the Fisherman's Trail

On the way to the next series, we passed through the town of Balsall Common and stopped for a quick drive-by (or so we thought!). No sign of the cache at GZ so we read the cache description only to find that it’s really a puzzle cache type as you have to guess where the final cache is based on some hints on the cache page. Hmmmm, ok … let’s try it anyway. Needless to say we ended up at a bus stop and started to get curious looks from passing motorists so gave up and moved on.

It's always good to find an ammo box. We wish they would be used more.

The next walk was around the Bloom Trail, which was set in some lovely countryside. All nice quick finds here too with nothing too taxing.

A beautiful day to be out on the canal

We were on 34 finds for the day by now but still had an hour or so spare, so decided to see if we could get up to 40 finds for the day.

Strange cache container that looked a bit like an aerosol deodorant bottle

The next cache was down this long dead end lane and as we neared the end we could see a fire engine and firemen everywhere. Oh no, I hope there is not a fire. Needless to say there wasn’t and the fire engine was turning round and going on it’s way by the time we parked up. I wonder if they need to update their sat-nav software😉.

A small yellow hill - rapeseed is in full bloom this time of year

A few drive-by’s followed although we had to be creative about deciding which caches to go for as we’ve found most of the other caches in this immediate area. We ended up heading a bit further north and picking off the final few caches in the Tutti Frutti and Over The Rainbow series. Both these series are spread out all round South and East Birmingham and we’ve done them as individual caches over quite a few seperate trips. We now have the bonus co-ords though🙂.

That's Birmingham city centre over there in the distance

41 finds for the day and an absolutely excellent day out with my lovely boy in very hot weather. Perfect🙂.